Paul Stories: The Hand Signal For You’re Sitting On Your Mic

This one’s for the crew of The Computer Chronicles, who heard it about 50 times.

In the summer of 1970, I was a vacation relief engineer at KGW-TV in Portland. One day, I was the sound man for the local evening news. Tom Craven was the director. “You’d better not screw up,” he told me. I nervously checked and double-checked all the microphones.

John Cardis was the anchor, with Jack Cappel doing the weather. Things went fine for the first 20 minutes. In those days, the sports guy ran downstairs from the newsroom to the set at the last minute so he could include late baseball scores from the East.

Pat Stuckey literally runs into the studio, and sits down just as Tom calls, “Open Cardis mic, fade up on camera 1.” John says, “Now with the sports, here’s Pat Stuckey.” “Camera 2, Stuckey mic,” says Craven.

Still Awake? Read the rest of this interminable anecdote here.